In the space of just a decade, the Internet, because it provides access to information, and the ability to publish information, in revolutionary ways, has emerged from relative obscurity to international prominence. Whereas, in general, an internet is a network of networks, the Internet is a global collection of interconnected local, mid-level, and wide-area networks that use the Internet Protocol (IP) as the network layer protocol. Whereas the Internet embraces many local- and wide-area networks, a given local- or wide-area network may or may not form part of the Internet.
As the Internet and its underlying technologies have become increasingly familiar, attention has become focused on Internet security and computer network security in general. With unprecedented access to information has also come unprecedented opportunities to gain unauthorized access to data, change data, destroy data, make unauthorized use of computer resources, interfere with the intended use of computer resources, etc. These opportunities have been exploited time and time again by many types of malware including, but is not limited to computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, etc. As experience has shown, the frontier of cyberspace has its share of scofflaws, resulting in increased efforts to protect the data, resources, and reputations of those embracing intranets and the Internet.
Recently, some new types of software have emerged, collectively called “spyware.” Spyware, while not as malicious as the aforementioned conventional viruses, Trojan horses, etc., may still cause problems for computer users. For example, spyware may be designed to log keystrokes, track which websites a computer user visits, and/or transmit personal information to a third party.
In the context of the present description, the term spyware is further deemed to include other related types of similar software such as adware, dialer software, other equivalents, and/or any other software that is less malicious than conventional malware. For example, adware is typically designed to download and display advertisements on a screen of a computer, and can be very intrusive. Dialer software, on the other hand, is designed to redirect a dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) connection of a computer to a different, more expensive phone number, in exchange for access to something, typically pornography.
Often, this software is marketed as legitimate applications which the computer user ostensibly installs willingly. For example, a free music player application may be come bundled with adware and require that the adware be installed before the music player application will work. The owner of the adware conventionally pays the owner of the music player to include the adware.
Although some of these examples of spyware border on legitimacy, many of these applications are poorly written, and cause compatibility problems with other software. Moreover, spyware can be very intrusive, waste network bandwidth, and cause a slew of other problems.
While the distinguishing feature of malware such as a computer virus is still that it replicates from file to file, such malware has evolved from simply being pieces of code that replicate into tools to enable more targeted violations of computer security. This trend is seen most clearly in the existence of “zombie” networks. These networks come into being when a virus infects many computers which all then communicate to the malware author awaiting commands. Once the network is in place, it can be used for many nefarious deeds including launching denial of service attacks, sending SPAM, etc.
As computer systems are become more and more complicated and associated disks contain more and more files, an increasing amount of time is needed to scan all these files in order to detect spyware and/or malware. On some large file servers containing many terabytes of data, such time to perform a complete scan can exceed one week. Unfortunately, it is often necessary to be able to detect spyware and/or malware in a much more expeditious manner.
Further, it is sometimes beneficial for a malware and/or spyware scanner product to contain a true “on-access scanner,” which scans files the instant they are created. Unfortunately, it is sometimes not possible for some products to incorporate such an on-access scanner. In these cases, the system is only protected by “on-demand scanning,” which is a scan that is run per a certain schedule, for example, once per day. Because such scanning happens infrequently, there is a sizeable window of opportunity for spyware and/or malware to cause harm.
There is thus a need for overcoming these and/or other problems associated with the prior art.